Morris v. New Mexico

Aja Riggs, a New Mexico woman with advanced uterine cancer, and physicians Katherine Morris and Aroop Mangalik are asking a New Mexico court to rule that no law prevents doctors in the state from providing aid in dying.

Ms. Riggs, Dr. Morris and Dr. Mangalik are asking the court to declare that physicians who provide a prescription for medication to a mentally competent, terminally ill patient, which the patient could consume to bring about a peaceful death, would not be subject to criminal prosecution under existing New Mexico law, which makes a crime of assisting another to “commit suicide.”

The choice of a dying patient for a peaceful death is no kind of “suicide,“ the case asserts, and the physician does not assist such a patient in “committing suicide.” Compassion & Choices and the ACLU of New Mexico represent the plaintiffs.

Katherine Morris, MD, is a surgical oncologist, cancer researcher and assistant professor of medicine. Dr. Aroop Mangalik is a practicing oncologist as well as a clinical researcher in internal medicine and hematology-oncology, and a professor of medicine.